Chris Smart has announced the release of Korora 22, a set of user-friendly, Fedora-based desktop Linux distributions with a choice of Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE 5, MATE and Xfce desktops: "It has been a long road to the Korora 22 (code name 'Selina') release and we're sorry that it has taken so long. However, it is now finally available for download. KDE 4 is no longer supported in Korora 22. If you do not wish to upgrade to KDE 5 then please stick with Korora 21. With this release we've decided to no-longer include Adobe Flash out of the box, due to the continued high number of security flaws. The repository is still enabled, however, and if you wish to use Flash you can install it using the package manager, or command line 'sudo dnf install flash-plugin' - or install and use Google Chrome which has the current up-to-date version of Flash." Continue to the release announcement for a full list of new features. Download (MD5, pkglist): korora-22-x86_64-cinnamon-live.iso (1,865MB, torrent), korora-22-x86_64-gnome-live.iso (2,027MB, torrent), korora-22-x86_64-kde-live.iso (2,589MB, torrent), korora-22-x86_64-mate-live.iso (1,948MB, torrent), korora-22-x86_64-xfce-live.iso (1,842MB, torrent).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of a test release for FreeBSD 10.2. The new release candidate, version 10.2-RC2, offers users a number of improvements to UEFI support, laptop suspend/resume and driver updates. Security updates discovered since the previous release candidate have been patched and more work has been done on the 10.2 release notes, which are a work in progress. Work has also been done to make the live images for ARM devices more accessible: "For convenience for those without console access to supported ARM devices, a default 'freebsd' user exists for ssh login. The password is 'freebsd', which it is strongly recommended to change after gaining access to the system. Additionally, the 'root' user password is 'root', which is also recommended to change." More information, along with upgrade instructions for people running previous releases of FreeBSD, can be found in the project's release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-10.2-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,612MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.2-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (2,428MB, SHA256).

The developers of Zorin OS, a desktop distribution based on Ubuntu which strives to present a friendly interface for people transition from Windows, have announced the release of Zorin OS 10. The new release is based on Ubuntu 15.04 and features a new visual style with new fonts and icon themes. "With Zorin OS 10, we have refreshed the selection of default applications with the addition of a streamlined new Media Player, the gorgeous Geary Mail client, Calendar app and the new Activity Journal, which lets you see the files and documents you have worked with based on duration and the time throughout the day. Our existing app selection has also been treated with updates, bug fixes and design enhancements throughout. Zorin OS 10 is based on Ubuntu 15.04 and comes pre-installed with the updated Linux Kernel 3.19 &amp; systemd for performance boosts, stronger security and improved hardware support. As always, Zorin OS 10 uses the Zorin Desktop environment with Zorin Menu for unparalleled customization and the Zorin Look Changer for ultimate ease of use. We also include our Zorin Web Browser Manager to ease the installation of web browsers." The release announcement supplies additional details along with screen shots. Downloads (MD5): zorin-os-10-core-64.iso (1,480MB, pkglist).

The developers of blackPanther OS, a Hungarian distribution that originally forked from Mandriva, have announced the launch of blackPanther OS 14.1. The blackPanther distribution ships with the KDE 4 desktop and offers users a unified settings panel that combines KDE's System Settings and Mandriva's Control Centre. "We are sure you’ll enjoy the many improvements. We’ve done our best to bring the latest technology to blackPanther while still maintaining the stability and security that you have come to expect. blackPanther OS is well known for its simplicity and the fact that we try to bring software to you in the condition that the authors intended. blackPanther OS v14.1 (Walking Dead) brings many updates and enhancements, KDE 4.14, a recent stable release of the 4.1x.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment." Further information is available in the project's release announcement (English, Hungarian). Download: blackPantherOS-v14.1-WalkingDead-i586-CD.iso (670MB, MD5, pkglist).

Oracle has announced the release of Oracle Linux 6.7, the latest release of the distribution's legacy branch based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7: "We're happy to announce the general availability of Oracle Linux 6 Update 7, the seventh update release for Oracle Linux 6. You can find the individual RPM packages on the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) and our public yum repository and ISO installation images are available for download from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. Notable features in this release include: Open Security Content Automation Protocol (OpenSCAP), including the oscap utility for enhanced security auditing and compliance; Load Balancing and High Availability with Keepalived and HAProxy, supported under Oracle Linux Premier Support subscriptions; enhanced SSSD support for Active Directory, including dynamic updates to DNS, group and user lookups of NetBIOS names, site discovery of domain controllers...." See the release announcement for more information. Download: OracleLinux-R6-U7-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso (3,733MB, SHA1, pkglist).

The developers of Elive, a commercial distribution based on Debian which features the Enlightenment desktop, have released a new test release. Elive 2.6.8 Beta offers better touchpad support, fixes large fonts when using some NVIDIA video cards and makes Zsh the default command line shell. The release announcement contains the following list of changes and improvements: "Huge fonts with NVIDIA cards fixed. Much improved touchpad default configurations. Internet configuration widget is now static in the desktop so the users won't miss it. Zsh shell by default, with a ton of amazing features included, we configured it to keep a maximum compatibility with the bash shell so that the users won't see any difference, if you don't know Zsh think about it like a much more powerful bash shell, it includes a small demo to help have an idea of its powerful features. A lot of fixes in the internal Elive tools. Improved auto-detected configurations. Lots of small fixes and improvements in the installer. Skype audio works again by using ALSA if you run it from the menus." Downloads: elive_2.6.8_beta_hybrid.iso (2,429MB, MD5, pkglist).

Kai Hendry has announced the release of Webconverger 31.0, the latest update of the project's specialist Linux distribution for web kiosks: "Webconverger 31 release. Two months ago was our momentous Jessie-based Webconverger 30 release and since then we've: fixed an issue with printing; pushed Firefox 39; further locked down some new Mozilla anti-features like social services, pocket and hello URLs; received a fantastic endorsement from the (Internet) famous security pundit SwiftOnSecurity. What next? We could really do with your feedback, help and support on a couple of goals for the next release: making wireless setups easier; improve boot times; perhaps work on efficient sharing a single machine with multiseat if there is a demand for it. Managed to integrate the EETI eGalaxTouch driver for some models of resistive touchscreens. It works well as your can see by this touch screen demo video and it's typically deployed in point of sales in retail. Unfortunately the driver is in a private branch since the end user of license is very limited and a good case study of how not to write a license." Here is the full release announcement. Download: webc-31.0.iso (409MB, SHA1, pkglist).

Alan Baghumian has announced the availability of a second test release for Parsix GNU/Linux 8.0. The new development release, which carries the version number 8.0-TEST2, is based on Debian 8 "Jessie" and offers users UEFI support along with up to date versions of the GNOME desktop, LibreOffice and popular web browsers. "Parsix GNU/Linux 8.0 (code name Mumble) brings stable GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, a brand new kernel and an updated installer. This version has been synchronized with Debian Jessie repositories as of July 25, 2015. Parsix Mumble ships with GNOME 3.16 and LibreOffice 4.3.3 productivity suit by default. Highlights: Updated installer system with better UEFI support, GNOME Shell 3.16.3, GRUB 2, GNU Iceweasel (Firefox) 39.0, GParted 0.19.0, Empathy 3.12.10, LibreOffice 4.3.3, VirtualBox 4.3.28 and a kernel based on Linux 4.0.9 with TuxOnIce 3.3, BFS and other extra patches. Live DVD has been compressed using SquashFS and XZ." Additional details are available in the project's release notes. Download: parsix_8.0-TEST-2-amd64.iso (1,241MB, MD5, pkglist).

Soren Jacobsen has announced the availability of the second release candidate for the upcoming NetBSD 7.0: "On behalf of the NetBSD project, it is my pleasure to announce the second release candidate of NetBSD 7.0. Some of the changes since 7.0_RC1 are: OpenSSL updated to 1.0.1p; BIND updated to 9.10.2-P2; IPSEC support is now included by default in Xen kernels; fix several security issues in calendar(1); installboot(8) now supports wedge names; fix a quota panic when using WAPBL (PR 49948); fix a memory leak in the drm2 code; avoid an X crash on i915 DRMKMS; add a postinstall(8) check to ensure that /etc/man.conf reflects the modern mandoc world (PR 50020); add a postinstall(8) check to ensure that /etc/fonts/fonts.conf is up to date; tset(1) - fix handling of the erase character; gdb(1) - fix attaching to a running process again after previously detaching; NPF - handle unregistered interfaces correctly; npfctl(8) - fix a NULL dereference...." Read the release announcement for further details. Installation CD images are available for several dozens of architectures; here are the quick links to download the amd64 and i386 images (MD5): NetBSD-7.0_RC2-amd64.iso (372MB), NetBSD-7.0_RC2-i386.iso (405MB).

Robert Lange has announced the release of VectorLinux 7.1 "Light" edition, a Slackware-based distribution featuring the lightweight IceWM window manager: "Vector Linux Light 7.1 is released and available for download. The 'lightness' of this edition is relative to our Standard edition, and is achieved by using the lightweight IceWM window manager in place of the Xfce desktop environment. You may also choose bare-bones X Window with just TWM. Otherwise the base system and installation experience is the same as Standard. IceWM is old school. It uses a manual approach, much like a stick shift instead of an automatic transmission. It doesn't change unless you tell it to. Configuration is managed by editing plain text files. To make things easier and get you started, some of the most common tweaks are also scripted and controllable by a GUI app. The target audience consists of those who like and prefer IceWM, owners of older computers, and users who want a minimal, yet functional starting point for their own creation. Minimum recommended hardware: an Intel Core class CPU, 1 GB of RAM, and 10 GB of drive space." Here is the brief release announcement. Download the installation CD image from here: VL64-7.1-LIGHT.iso (618MB, MD5), VL-7.1-LIGHT.iso (618MB, MD5).

Chris Buechler has announced the release of pfSense 2.2.4, a FreeBSD-based firewall solution. The new release mostly includes bug fixes and security updates. The bug fixes include patches to prevent cross-site scripting attacks against the web interface, a fix for a TCP resource exhaustion attack and enhancements to prevent file corruption during unclean shutdowns. Buechler points out that a recent patch to FreeBSD's OpenSSL implementation was not needed as pfSense did not ship the vulnerable version of the OpenSSL software. "As always, you can upgrade from any previous version straight to 2.2.4. For those already running any 2.2.x version, this is a low risk upgrade. This is a high priority upgrade for those using IPsec on 2.2.x versions. For those on 2.1.x or earlier versions, there are a number of significant changes which may impact you." The release announcement has more details and a full list of changes since the last version of pfSense can be found in the New Features and Changes document. Downloads: pfSense-LiveCD-2.2.4-RELEASE-amd64.iso.gz (99MB, SHA256).

Ekaterina Lopukhova has announced the release of ROSA R6 "Desktop Fresh" edition, a desktop Linux distribution featuring a customised KDE 4.14.8 desktop: "The ROSA company gladly presents ROSA Desktop Fresh R6, the number 6 in the 'R' lineup of the free ROSA distributions with the KDE desktop as the main graphical environment. As always, the distro presents a vast collection of games and emulators and the Steam platform package along with a standard suite of audio and video communications software including the newest version of Skype. All modern video formats are supported. The distribution includes the fresh LibreOffice version, the full TeX suite for true nerds as well, along with best Linux desktop publishing, text editing and WYSISYG software. The LAMP/C++/ environment packages are waiting to be installed by true hackers. The distribution is based on the ROSA 2014.1 platform which includes two years support (till Q3 of 2016). A few more releases based on this platform are expected to be presented for the users in the future." See the release notes for more information and a list of package updates. Download: ROSA.FRESH.KDE.R6.x86_64.iso (1,835MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

Glen Barber has announced that the first release candidate for the upcoming FreeBSD 10.2 is now ready for testing: "The first RC build of the 10.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Changes Since 10.2-BETA2: tcpdump(8) has been updated to obtain capsicum(4) rights for dump file rotation; the ixgbe(4) driver has been updated to fix setting sysctl(8) tunable entries in loader.conf(5); the ZFS txg_quiesce() function has been updated to use __noinline(), allowing DTrace monitoring for txg_quiesce() calls; bsdinstall(8) has been updated to align partitions on 1MB boundaries when ZFS is the selected filesystem, as well as a number of other changes, including detecting BIOS versions to determine when the 'active' flag should be set on the boot partition; the quota(1) utility has been updated to support IPv6; the xen(4) netfront interface has been updated to preserve configurations across virtual machine migrations...." Continue to the release announcement to find out more. Download: FreeBSD-10.2-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,615MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.2-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (2,432MB, SHA256).

Douglas DeMaio has announced the availability of a test release of the openSUSE distribution's new Leap product branch. The test release, called openSUSE Leap 42.1 Milestone 1, is in the early stages of its development and is intended for alpha testers and people curious as to what openSUSE has planned for the Leap series. Richard Brown, Chairman of the openSUSE Board, says Leap will provide a middle road between SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE's rolling Tumbleweed branch. "As Tumbleweed keeps rolling with the latest features and subsystems, Leap will fill the gap between the longevity of a SLE core and the innovation related to Tumbleweed. The quality and environmental care Tumbleweed provides with its development model should quickly translate to a top-quality distribution for Linux users, sysadmins and developers. The milestone was moving forward with a 3 series Linux Kernel, but the Long-Term Support 4.1 Kernel, which enhances ext4 file-system encryption and power improvements for both ARM and x86 devices, was needed for the release of the first milestone. The new Kernel was practically flawless when added to the next build, which had some minor errors." More information on the test release is available in the project's release announcement. Downloads: openSUSE-42.1-DVD-x86_64-Build0017-Media.iso (3,060MB, SHA256, pkglist).